The real ORANGE or the fake?????

Thank you very much! Have a great day!

thank you very much, I suspected it a bit...

orange, like any company operating via the internet and/or by mail, will NEVER ask you, whether by email, postal mail, phone, or SMS, for private and confidential information such as email address, bank account number, credit card code, numbers on the bank card...

the only person who can ask you for this is an employee of the said company face to face (i.e., with a consultant, for example). now, you have an account with someone (for example, internet subscription), unless you change your bank account, the information cannot be "supposedly" lost or erroneous. the information is stored on different encrypted and secure servers that no one (at least in principle!) can use without the decryption used. this is why scammers "annoy" us into believing that there is a problem with a specific account and that they need confidential information.

so, as long as you haven't entered the confidential information requested in a scam email after possibly clicking on a link that takes you to a fraudulent site, you shouldn't worry, in principle. if you have entered it on the online site, then yes, you can worry and I recommend exercising the utmost vigilance on your bank account, for example.

if you haven't clicked and/or had a window to download and then install something and you haven't installed anything, you have no worries (unless someone has had your computer in their hands!). if you installed something suspicious during or after that, then yes, worry. copy all your files that you want to keep to an external drive, do antivirus scans (for example, Bitdefender online), and anti-spyware like Spybot+ Adaware. take a look in the program manager to see if there's any "weird" software that you don't recognize (but check online to see if it's a useful good software). if it's dubious software, uninstall it. do not enter confidential information on the computer for a while.

the ideal, to be sure, is to format the computer and reinstall all the software/games that you need. at least that's certain. and then change all your passwords afterwards.

Hello,
I just read your message, don’t worry too much, it happened to me too, and I also clicked on the link!
I haven’t had any issues since... you just need to be vigilant and not open emails from people you don’t know! Anyway, I avoid anything related to bank accounts!! However, what you can do on your PC is to make sure that the information you type doesn’t stay on your hard drive... I was advised to do that afterwards... if you need help, check the forum, that’s where I got my information, you need to change some settings on your PC... there you go
have a nice day!

I told you so!

As I said, when you receive a weird email, text, or call from a company you know or don't know, whether you have an account with that company or not, they will NEVER ask you for confidential information except in person.

So never respond to a request other than verbal, face-to-face.

If you're asked for confidential information, contact the company in question through the contact details provided AT THE BEGINNING (so the ones given at the very start when opening the customer account and not the numbers/sites/emails in the request), but in 99.9% of cases, it's a scam.

As long as you don’t respond to the SMS, call, or email regarding that "super important and serious" request (!!), you should not be bothered afterwards. If you respond and there's a "tracker," then you risk receiving further requests. Indeed, sometimes there are little programs in the request or an order that, if responded to, send a signal to the source person that says: "you see this number here" (phone), or "you see this email address here" (email), "well it's being used, so you can spam it!" That's also why you should never respond to such messages, to avoid getting only this kind of stuff and/or Viagra... in bulk.

I once saw on a person's computer who clicked ONLY once on a link for a PayPal account that supposedly asked him to regularize his account, and his email box, which was initially empty (just a dozen emails as it was recently created for PayPal transactions), got filled with 2GB of emails for PayPal, Viagra, X, and others of the same kind in just one day a few days later... after clicking on that first link from the so-called PayPal that had "lost" (!) his banking information!!!


So don't click, don’t give out personal and confidential information without being sure (if a guy or woman, in the street, that you’ve never seen before, asks you for your credit card numbers, would you give them to them? No, well it’s the same here). Also, have a good anti-spam/phishing/scamming filter with your email account (whether it’s included in online functions, like on the computer if used with Outlook or WLM mail or other mail software).

Contacting customer service for a fraudulent email is pointless and only serves to waste money and make Orange profit!
Spending 3 hours on the phone from service to service only to end up with someone who won't know what to do in this case is useless.
The only address you might use is the one from the website I mentioned last year, and otherwise the email address I remember is abuse@impots.gouv.fr (to be verified), but it won't help; those sites are usually closed automatically within 24 hours, while reporting to the tax authorities or Orange (in this case) will do nothing for at least 21 business days.

Otherwise, one effective approach is to click on the provided link (or copy/paste it) and then in your browser, report it as a counterfeit site. In Firefox, it's super quick; the site will be verified within 3-4 hours at most and will be blocked by the browser and poorly indexed thereafter. So it will be inaccessible quickly.

It's good to say that, but having worked for Orange, it's exactly the same for any other ISP or hotline, reporting doesn't help at all, even to the state via abuse spam@gouv.fr (I'm not 100% sure about the government's abuse spam address).
Indeed, even though the idea is good, in practice, it's just a waste of time for the spammed individual.
Let's take the example of a spam that we receive on Monday, January 1st at 8 a.m. (not considering that it's a holiday. Anyway, let's pretend it’s a normal day).
We go to the ISP's website, hotline, or the government's site to report that we received spam X, Y, or Z. To fill it out, it takes us between 4 and 15 minutes depending on the reporting site.
So, at 8:15 a.m., the report is made.
After the report, I will discuss both sides, one being the report and the other the spammer:

- For ISPs (Orange for example), the request is read at least a week later. When I worked there, we processed requests 15 days after! For the government, it's 30 days!

- As for the spammer, knowing that usually it's rarely a French individual doing it from home with a computer registered in their name, but rather someone using a computer with a fake name who uses free or hacked Wi-Fi networks, or as is often the case, the spammer is located abroad and often in Côte d'Ivoire, where local hacking is prevalent, with one PC license, there are millions installed, and all sorts of shady dealings..., and therefore, the spammer knowing what they risk, won't linger on this, using the same information/contact details... it won't last more than 2 days at most!

- Furthermore, it's important to know that web browsers have a site reporting function (quicker and more efficient). Indeed, I sometimes get spam and I intentionally click on the link to be able to report through the browser. Within 5 minutes on average, the site becomes inaccessible because it is protected following the denunciation. (Much faster and more effective than reporting by email or online!)


Anyway, now let's assume that the report triggers pursuit actions against the spammer. Do you really believe that even a week after the report, the site/government or any hotline wants to initiate action by filing a complaint with an authority that will, in turn, "attempt" to pursue but by the time that takes + procedures, courts... it will take at least 3 months if the spammer is identified and in France. If they're abroad, it could take years (if they even want to pursue!).

Knowing that a spammer does not use the fake information and site for more than 2 days and that it's often abroad, that a procedure costs tens of thousands of euros to pursue (not to mention the victims), and that the government, etc., want to save money, do you really believe that this will ever come to fruition from a "simple" report like this? Only if there is a gathering of hundreds of victims who got scammed, then yes, it can happen, but an individual report achieves nothing and strictly nothing.

Having worked at Orange, we only engaged a machine after receiving at least 10,000 reports from 10,000 different people for the same spam, which only happened once in 100, and even then! The average was 5 reports for the same spam. We were ordered to close such cases.

So what’s the point of reporting? You might click on the link to report the fraudulent site, which will be shut down within 5 minutes to a few hours, but otherwise the simplest and most effective thing is:
1°) Do not open the email
2°) Put it in junk mail
3°) Block similar addresses
4°) Delete the message.
5°) Move on and have a nice coffee!